Cachorrinho sandwich (Portuguese hot dog)

Jonathan Surratt

A Cachorrinho or Portuguese hot dog is a great sandwich that you'll find on lots of restaurant menus in Porto, Portugal. It's a fairly simple sandwich but it does require some specific ingredients. Please check the notes below the recipe directions for more information about certain ingredients. Also you can read the associated blog post for photos and more tips.

YIELD
Instructions for 1 cachorrinho

PREP TIME
schedule 10 minutes

COOK TIME
schedule 10 minutes

TOTAL TIME
schedule 20 minutes

Ingredients:

Spicy butter sauce

2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon piri piri hot sauce (or your favorite hot sauce)

Cachorrinho

1 skinny baguette (about 9 inches long - see notes for recipe)
6 to 8 ounces of uncooked linguica sausage (see notes)
1 to 2 slices of gouda cheese (or provolone)

Check below recipe directions
for additional notes.

Related blog post: Puppies from Porto

Suggested Equipment

Cuisinart Panini Press, Stainless Steel Griddler

Directions:

Spicy butter sauce: Add butter and hot sauce to a small microwave-safe bowl and microwave for 20 to 30 seconds or until the butter is fully melted. Stir to make sure everything is incorporated well.

Cachorrinho: prepare a panini press and set it to high. If you do not have a panini press you can cook this sandwich upside down on a grill pan or cast iron skillet set over medium heat.

Slice your baguette, remove the casing from the uncooked sausage, and spread the meat on the bottom slice of the baguette.

Once the panini press is warmed and ready, add the bottom slice of baguette with the sausage spread on top and cook for 4 to 5 minutes. At this point, the sausage should be fully cooked and it should have some nice grill marks.

With a brush or spoon, paint some spicy butter sauce on the cooked sausage and then layer on 1 to 2 slices of cheese that has been broken in half to fit on top of the meat. Cover with the top of the baguette and close the panini press again.

Cook the closed sandwich until the cheese starts to get nice and melty, probably another 3 minutes or so. Open the panini press and paint some more spicy butter sauce on top of the bread, close the press and cook one more minute.

Remove the sandwich from the panini press to a cutting board and slice the sandwich into 6 to 8 slices to make it ready for sharing.

Notes:

Baguettes: I use my French-style baguette recipe to make this cachorrinho recipe. Instead of following the recipe shaping instructions to make 3 fifteen-inch baguettes, I instead shaped 8 baguettes that are roughly 8 to 9 inches long. This makes the size of the bread much closer to the small skinny baguettes they use in Porto for cachorrinho.

Linguica sausage: I used this linguica sausage recipe from Hunt Gather Cook and it made a really good sausage. I don't think it was necessarily that accurate to the sausage in the Cachorrinho but it was close enough for me. If you don't want to make your own sausage, you can make this sandwich with pretty much any type of uncooked pork sausage, you should just remove the casing and make a roughly 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick consistent layer of sausage on the bottom slice of bread before grilling.

Have you made this recipe? Share on Bluesky or Instagram, tag @beerinator and let him know!

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